


Stranger in the Woods

by teyla



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Episode Tag, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Episode: e079 Blackbird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 12:24:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18249794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teyla/pseuds/teyla
Summary: Lily Wright's perfectly fine and in control of her life. She doesn't need help, thank you very much, least of all from Sammy Stevens.





	Stranger in the Woods

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings about Lily, and Lily's and Sammy's frenemy-ship. I wrote this right after listening to _Blackbird_ and thought I had more to add, but it's stubbornly remained a one-shot, so I'm posting it as is.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! If you do, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for reading! <3

Being drunk is fucking great.

It’s not, of course, and Lily knows that. But that’s what being drunk does; it allows you to be certain of mutually exclusive facts with a natural ease that’s no less than freeing.

When she’s drunk, reality becomes less definitive, and the possibility of multiverses moves within grasp. When she’s drunk, her podcast’s not a bygone, Pippa’s still around, and Jack’s still just a phone call away. She can ask him about rugby, about his show, about anything that’s not Sammy Stevens, because Jack doesn’t like her asking about Sammy, and she doesn’t want to waste time talking about that backstabbing traitor.

She’s had long, good phone calls with Jack while drunk, and she doesn’t care that he’s not on the other end. Somewhere, in some universe, he is. When she’s drunk, that’s enough for her.

Alcohol’s an expensive habit, and so is living out of a hotel. She knew that, too, but the knowledge didn’t seem to matter much. It mattered to the hotel manager, who kept knocking on her door and being rude about her bill. She’s surprised he let her stay for as long as he did. It’s probably because he realized that in a fight, no matter how drunk, she would kick his ass.

In the end, she took pity on him and left of her own volition. She didn’t take her shoes, because who needs shoes? She had a vague notion of becoming a hermit in the deep Oregon woods that surround this town. Break into vacation cabins and live off of Campbell’s soup and trail mix. There’s a book about a New England guy who did that for twenty-seven years and survived. If some unwashed kid from Maine can do it, Lily Wright can do it in her sleep.

She hasn’t found a suitable cabin yet, though, and now Mall-Cop-Turned-Sheriff Krieghauser has showed up. She can’t go breaking into things while he’s around. He’s absolutely killing her buzz, bringing back reality and reminding her that Jack’s not on the other end, that she just walked however many miles from one shitty podunk town to another without shoes on. That was probably not a good idea for whatever time of the year it is. Cold-weather time, dead-trees-and-bleak-roads time. Her feet hurt.

“Just sit down, Miss Wright. Help is on the way.”

“That’s not where it should be.” She tries to take a swig, but just gets a mouthful of air. Turns the bottle upside down and shakes it. Come on, man. “Saying “help is on the way”, that’s like saying “you’re gonna be okay”. How do you know? Are you psychic?”

“Not that I know, Miss Wright, but I do possess a cellular phone and the skill to use it. I promise you’ll be more comfortable if you sit down.”

“You can’t promise that.” She waves her arm in a sweeping gesture that almost sends the bottle flying. “You don’t know me. Nobody in this fucking town knows me, you don’t know what makes me comfortable.”

“You are correct, we’re not particularly well acquainted.” Krieghauser’s way of speaking is nothing short of ridiculous, a trailer park kid who stumbled into a library and decided that talking like Jonathan Franzen would give him an edge over his peers. He wasn’t wrong, apparently, considering he’s Sheriff now. “I do have a grasp of what generally makes a human being comfortable, though, Miss Wright, and despite everything, I consider you a human being.”

“Fuck you, Krieghauser.” That cuts deeper than she should let it. The downside to alcohol is that above a certain quantity, it’ll start chipping away at your defenses. She holds the bottle up against the light and finds her suspicions confirmed—it’s empty. With more force than necessary, she chucks it into a nearby bush.

“Miss Wright, please don’t—”

“You gonna help me sit down, then?” She spreads her hands, sways a little. “I’m fucking wasted, case you hadn’t noticed. You don’t help me, I’m probably gonna hit my head on your fucking military vehicle of a police car on my way down.”

Long-suffering is an understatement for Krieghauser’s face, but he does as he’s told, even sits down next to her by the side of the road. He’s got a narrow, bony shoulder, but beggars can’t be choosers, so she leans against him, anyway.

“Why’re you not arresting me? I’m breaking, like, five laws.”

“Just one, in fact. If you hadn’t thrown that bottle, it’d be zero. The State of Oregon considers public intoxication a health problem, not a criminal offense.”

“Fucking wild.”

Time passes the way it does when you’re drunk, where it breaks off in chunks rather than diminishes gradually. One moment she’s thinking about asking Krieghauser what she was meant to do with the bottle other than chuck it away—no trash cans anywhere nearby, as far as she can tell—, the next a car’s pulled up and she can hear boots on gravel approaching.

There’s enough light at this point to make out who it is that showed up. Lily makes a face. “The fuck’s he doing here?”

“I called him—”

“He called me, Lily.” True to his jackass self, Stevens talks over Krieghauser and makes the Sheriff swallow his words. “On the air, so. That happened. What’re you doing?”

He’s towering over her like a tall, menacing shadow backlit by the morning sun. Lily curls her lip. “Fuck off, Slenderman. You’re blocking my daylight.”

“Sammy—”

“It’s fine, Troy.” Stevens holds up a hand, acts like the grandstanding, fake-magnanimous asshole that he is. “I’ll deal with her, you don’t have to—”

“You’ll deal with me?” Krieghauser’s ridiculously large patrol car is still right there, so she grabs the wing mirror, uses it to regain unsteady feet. “I don’t need to be dealt with, and I definitely don’t need it from you, you condescending son of a—”

“Lily!”

Okay, so maybe standing isn’t really in the cards right now. Fucking presumptuous of Stevens to grab her elbow like that, but she’ll let it pass.

“Dude, where are your shoes?”

“Don’t need ‘em.” Standing’s exhausting. The fact that she’s sagging against Stevens is perfectly perfunctory. He’s the closest solid thing to lean against. “Don’t need _you_.”

“Clearly.” He says more than that, but it’s directed at Krieghauser so it doesn’t register. She’s preoccupied with the way her body’s letting her know that it’s time to go look for a bottle that still has something in it. Either that, or sober up, but that really doesn’t sound like an attractive option right now.

“Stevens.” It comes out a bit mumbled. “Hey, Shotgun, I gotta—” The roar of Krieghauser’s SUV makes her jump. “Jesus!”

Looks like the good Sheriff’s bowed out. She peers past Stevens’ arm to watch him pull away.

Stevens nudges her shoulder. “You gotta what, Lily? You gotta throw up?”

“No. ‘m not you. Bet you still can’t hold your fucking liquor.”

“I haven’t tried in a while.”

“Sanctimonious prick.”

This place, wherever it is that they are, it’s really fucking quiet. The road’s paved, but barely, asphalt crumbling and merging with the gravel shoulder almost seamlessly. There’s some warehouse or shed or tractor sales place in the distance, morning sunbeams bouncing off its roof and dispersing across a picturesque background of snowcapped mountains. Too early in the year for many birds to be around, so the loudest sound she can hear is Stevens' breath going in and out of his lungs. She does have her ear pressed right to his chest, but still. Don’t make such a noisy nuisance of yourself.

“You ready to go home?”

Oh, that’s funny. Makes her laugh. “You gonna drive me? Done it before, right? Drove my brother all the way across the country, back when you decided home wasn’t good enough anymore.”

He sighs in that annoying way he has, and the only reason she doesn’t punch his shoulder for it is because her hands are trapped between them. “I mean—your hotel, I guess?”

“’m not going back there.” She has some dignity, even if her current state might suggest otherwise. “Manager’s a jerk.”

“Okay.” He’s got that I’m-dealing-with-a-drunk-person tone, and it annoys her. Protesting kind of seems like a losing argument, though. “You got somewhere else you’re staying?”

“Figured I’d squat. Write a personal experience piece about it ‘n sell it to the Times.”

“Great plan, Lily.”

He doesn’t follow that up with anything. After a few moments, there’s fingers picking around in her hair. She makes an unwilling noise. “What’re you doing?”

“You’ve got half a forest tangled up in there.”

“And you’re, what, a monkey? Stop grooming me.”

The fingers disappear, and Lily’s careful not to pay notice to the pang of disappointment she feels. She digs her nose into Stevens’ shoulder hard enough for it to be uncomfortable. “So we’re just gonna stand here?”

“Whenever you’re ready to leave, my car’s right over there.”

It is, a shiny silver Prius that she hasn’t made fun of him enough for yet. She gives it a narrow glare. “Where’re you gonna take me?”

“Up to you.” He shrugs. “Where do you wanna go?”

That’s a weird question. Who trusts a drunk to make their own decisions? Unless—oh, fuck. She pulls a face. “God, you’re a prick.”

“What?”

“You’re gonna make me ask for it.” She should just shove him away and keep walking, refuse his help that he’s only giving on the precondition of her humiliating herself. She should do it. She _wants_ to do it. But her feet really do hurt a lot. “Fine, you win. I’m a mess, I got no place to stay. I need to crash on your couch. _Please_.”

His shoulders tense up, and for a second, cold panic tightens Lily’s throat. If he refuses her, that’s it. That’s the last person in the world she could maybe still ask for help telling her no. Panic is followed by rage, and she’s about to push him the fuck away when he grabs her wrists.

“Hey! Hey.” He finds her eyes, and god, he’s gotten _old_. She met him when he was just a kid, just out of college and thinking that cooking Kraft Dinner in a pot instead of nuking it was haute cuisine. Now he’s an old man with fucking wrinkles on his forehead. “Of course you can crash on my couch. Well. Ben’s couch.”

“Yeah, ‘cos you’re sleeping in his bed, right, so the couch is free.”

“Lily—” He’s old, and he’s turned into such a martyr. Used to be he had some anger of his own, outrage at being made to eat shit every day. Now he just gets this kicked-puppy look on his face. “Come on.”

He puts an arm around her shoulders, guides her to the car. Maybe she’s gotten old, too, because despite it being one of the most condescending, patronizing things anyone could do to her, she doesn’t protest. She lets him get on with it, and when she sinks into the passenger seat, it’s with something like relief.

She supposes it’s better than the back of a patrol car. If only by a margin.


End file.
